I have five cute kids. And I have some rockin short green racing shorts- I wear them mainly because it embarrasses my wife so much. I like ultimate frisbee, trail running, reading, and cheering for the Denver Broncos! And I have the absolute best wife in the world. And I used to run for the now-disbanded national Team Pearl Izumi- Ultra!

PM- ran in the 92 deg heat of the day. And wore a black t-shirt. With a black long sleeve shirt on top. Why? To get me ready to run OD 100 this weekend... Like Neal Gorman notes, it's gonna be a hot one. Easy 6, felt good. Still a bit sluggish, as expected.

On an unrelated note, runworks.com calculator puts my 16:24 5k from a few weeks ago as a 15:55 in cooler temps. Huh. I've never imagined running a sub-16. Maybe I'll have to give it a go sometime.

Lunch- 5.5 with 1 faster in the 90 deg heat. The normal high for my race location this weekend (Woodstock, VA) is 81 deg. The East Coast has record highs this week, though, with predicted temp in the mid-90's now. I guess I'm as well acclimated as anyone. And I've been driving around with my heat on recently (I think my car was 120 deg coming home today).

I'll do a full write up on my blogger later, but I'll just put an update here for anyone wondering my result. Short version is I generally felt good through mile 57, running exactly on my 17:10 schedule and in 4th place, then crashed hard. A planned 80 min section took 110 min. Nothing wrong like blisters, puking, hydration, blown quads, etc. Just felt no energy, tapped dry. Limped into mile 65 aid station where Barry covered me in ice for 20 min to get me moving again. Had about 30 min of rebirth, then crashed again even harder. Reached mile 75 over 80 min behind schedule and fading, somehow still around 6-8th place. After an hour of sitting, I stopped my watch and pulled out of the race.

Like I often say, "Go big or go home." I had tried to go big and just didn't have it today. I probably could have walked though the final 25 in 7-8 hrs or so, giving me a 20+ hr finish, but that didn't really interest me. I had shown up to compete all or nothing. But my body was tapped dry, so I DNF'ed. Barry went and had a blast running Sherman's gap without me, and I got a ride to our car at mile 86 where I spent several hours talking to crews and runners (and generally feeling pretty good).

I'm sure some people will question not continuing, especially since a top 10, sub-24 hr finish was still likely. But I weighed what I wanted, and acted accordingly. I was there to compete, not to finish. Unlike past ultras where I had multiple projected finish times prepared for my crew, this year I prepared only one, and went all in. I missed, and bailed. Cody and Paul, you'll understand what I mean when I say there was no "Oh Crap Slow" goal today...

A few stats: 50 miles in 7:53, 56 miles in 8:49 (9:26 avg). Next 18.6 miles in 4:25 (14:17 avg pace). Finished with 75 miles and 8300 gain/8600 loss in 13:15.